


From Ashes

by Dovey



Series: Bittersweet Treats [6]
Category: Naruto
Genre: (kill bill sirens), Character Development, Character Study, Gen, New Beginnings, Revenge, Sakura Centric, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, new goals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-05 17:39:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15868515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dovey/pseuds/Dovey
Summary: She hasn't got a family, hasn't got a team, not in any way either of those words should count. It's time to come to terms with that.





	1. Chapter 1

Fuck, but she feels sick.

It rots in her gut, and she can feel her stomach lining crumbling apart. The sight of it is like poison, rancid meat force-feed by loving hands, and she’d eaten it out of trust and love and this is where it gets her.

She sees them. She sees them, together, she knows how it goes. Sasuke asks about Naruto. Kakashi keeps a careful eye on them both. Naruto yells and teases and taunts with Sasuke-kun, at his side, like he’s meant to be. Like they’re all meant to be. She’d wanted- she’d wanted to be special, sure, but she’d be happy to be something to them. Anything. Class had promised her a  _ family,  _ in her squad, especially her first, and instead it’s exactly what she remembered at home. 

Sakura’s got three little brothers and two little sisters, and none of them are allowed to talk to her.

There’s no rules here, keeping her separate from the rest of her team; just invisible ropes tugging them apart, and the crack of her heart at the realization. She feels like she’s dying, and how close she’s come to that before. She’s got blood on her chest, but it’s somehow less gross than the spit from the man who’d choked out desperate gasps when she’d plunged her kunai into his chest. Dead. First one she’d killed, but two right after that, and lucky her that they were random mobsters and not trained nin or she’d be the body on the ground instead.

Would they notice? Would they care? Haruno-san and Haruno-Sama wouldn’t. They knew this was the cost of their integration to Konoha, had been planning around the loss of their first child since the day they set foot in the village of hidden leaves, and Sakura doubts they would even wonder how it happened. She’d been promised this team would be different, been promised there was an obligation to  _ care  _ if not to  _ love,  _ but here she was again, alone and disgusting and fraying at the edges and empty. God, but it hurts.

Naruto asks her about the blood on her cheeks when they get back to camp. She’d dug her hands in the dirt after scratching at her face, at her limbs, pinching at her bruises. Sucked up the blood with the muck and picked them apart. He gets distracted before she can respond, the smell of the cooking meating catching his attention and pulling him away. Her face is clean by the time dinner begins. (There are bandages on her cheeks, and she doesn’t notice when Kakashi stares at them, only spots when his eyes flick away in shame.  _ Rin  _ wants to slip off his tongue so he doesn’t say anything at all. This does not surprise her.) 

They make it back to Konoha and she finally lets her body cave in like the aching of her chest demands. She falls apart in her room, claws at her skin and peels at her scabs, she can feel her body is like wood riddled with termites, finally collapsing in on herself.

But she can’t stay there, can’t stay like that, because she hasn’t served the state. Her brothers, her sisters, they might be made to serve in her place. So she picks herself up and brushes out her hair, dreams of braiding it up like a noose and slicing it off, leaves it loose on her back instead, and hides in her clothes. She looks a mess, in the mirror, but she decides it doesn’t matter- nobody will ever look as close as she does, after all. She wears bright red to draw attention from the blooming injuries- fresh, fresher than her travels or recent fights could explain, but nobody will pay enough attention to notice how little they fade. Nobody will know she lost a fight with herself, that she’d stopped trying to win. 

She drags herself to training, and waits for the others. Sits and breathes and feels like there are holes in her lungs and she can never get in enough air to fill them up. She thinks about the men she killed, and can’t decide if it bothers her too much or too little. She feels sick and weak and empty and realizes, suddenly, she needs a purpose.

The others do. Sasuke-kun has a man to kill. Naruto wants to be Hokage. What does she have, except an obligation to live long enough that her siblings will not be forced to follow in her footsteps to an early grave? She thought she could find purpose in love, then in her team. But neither wanted her, and it was killing her to try anyways. 

But what does she  _ want _ ? What does she want, that doesn’t come from others? What does she want that she could get for herself? She wants to be strong. She wants to be whole. She wants to be…  _ someone.  _ But she also, god, she can feel it bubbling up from her gut like lava, knows it can't be good, but she wants  _ revenge. _

**_She wants the Hokage dead._ **

Maybe it’s petty. He might not even be the one who set the rules, but he is the one who makes sure they’re enforced. He’s the reason she serves, why her neighbors had a son and then  _ didn’t,  _ why half the people Sakura knows either serve in genin ranks and end up dead within five years, or sell themselves to afford to put food on the table. She wants him to pay for that, to pay a debt just like the rest of them. The thought feels like hot molten metal, poured into her belly and filling up the holes, hurting and building in equal measures. She can feel her spine straighten, lets her hand slip from it’s spot scratching at a cut to land in the grass and grip to a clump of dirt. Who else would do it? Who else has so little to risk for so little to gain? If she wants the Hokage dead, she’ll have to kill him herself. All four feet, ten inches of her, pink hair and malnourished training, no clan and no team and no home to call her own. 

Well. It’s a goal. 

She’d wanted a goal. Nothing else for her to do but chase it. 


	2. Finale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a flash forward to a sakura who achieves her goals.

There is- there is shrieking, shrieking and  _ yelling _ and the sound of death everywhere, and Naruto can barely hear it. He stares up in shock at the shining bubble surrounding his JiJi and some corpses that look like the mountains he loves to deface, and that creepy dude who caused all this.

And Sakura.

She’s there, too, and he has no idea how she got in or why but to his horror her fist goes through Jiji’s  _ chest  _ and his body slides back down her arm and she shakes it off, like garbage, like an annoyance, and there’s blood on her hand and  _ now  _ the anbu are struggling to get in, to grab her, but what does that matter when he’s dead. He’s already dead.  _ This has to be trick. _ Sakura-chan shouldn’t be able to do that, much less want to, much less- 

She turns to face the Man, and he’s grinning and gloating and saying something about  _ promise, a beautiful future, together,  _ and then she grabs his tongue from where it’s sliding in the air around her, and yanks him forward, down, and rips his head from his body.

**“There were** **_civilian here!_ ** **”**

 She roars, throwing his head at the earth in disgust. It’s- riveting, to watch it bounce down, and it’s hard to tear his eyes away as it nestles against Jiji’s body. He has no idea what’s happening. He has no idea what Sakura is  _ doing.  _ Nobody does, not from the shock on both sides’ faces, and the only one who stands firm is Sakura herself. 

“S-sakura-chan?”

“What do you  _ want,  _ Naruto.” She says, like it’s nothing. Like her skin isn’t boiling from where Orochimaru’s blood has splashed against it and turned to something like venom, like acid. Like she doesn’t have the stains of the Hokage’s heart sliding slick on her arm. Like her body isn’t trembling from exhaustion, her veins looking blue-green wrong, her hair spiking like she’s had an electric current zapped through her frame. 

“Sakura-”

And then she’s swallowed up by sand. He sees her eyes go wide, frantic, and her arms reach out towards him for a moment, and in shame- he has to admit it. He’d stepped back, instinctively, when those arms reached towards him. It’s a second of fear, one he clamps down on immediately and lunges forward to grab her, but it’s too late. She’s encased in sand and then the damn thing falls apart and her with it, gone, taken by that boy with the too-wide smile. 

_ What the hell.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its cool she just killed the otokage and hokage im sure she can kill the future kazekage too no biggie

**Author's Note:**

> me, thinking about how sakuras goal in the manga as a genin was basically just "marry sasuke": hmmm  
> sakura: if i just take sasukes goal.....and narutos goals....and add my personal trauma (tm) to the mix...the perfect recipe for my own goal


End file.
